Relax, Everything Is Deeply Intertwingled: Entrepreneurship 101

Ross Mayfield's post on Venture Capital blogs reminds me of a few of my favorite entrepreneurship blog posts...

The Torturous World of Powerpoint by Bradley Feld -- what to include in a startup pitch
You Are Only A First Time CEO Once and Why CEOs Fail by Fred Wilson -- on being self-aware
Oh, the Difference a Decade Makes by Joe Kraus -- on how it's much easier to start a business on much less capital
Hiring: No False Positives by Joe Kraus, and Hiring: False Positives and Negatives by Tim Converse -- on the challenge of hiring
Superhacker and Phoneboy and Hiring 101 and The Three F's of Success by, uh, yours truly...

...and, since I'm on the subject, here are a few of my favorite articles as well...

How to Start a Startup by Paul Graham (see also as Ev suggests the chapters "How to Create Wealth" and "Mind the Gap" from Paul Graham's book Hackers and Painters)
The Guerilla Guide to Interviewing and Fixing Venture Capital by Joel Spolsky (who has lots of gems in his archive as well)
The Art of Starting, by Guy Kawasaki (and transcribed excellently by Brendon Wilson)
An Engineer's View of Venture Capitalists by Nick Tredennick, with Brion Shimamoto
Why Startups Fail by Robert X. Cringely
The Sales Learning Curve by Mark Leslie
Diary of a Start-Up, the rise and fall of ArsDigita by Eve Andersson (see also Phil Greenspun's ArsDigita: From Start-Up to Bust-Up)

And remember that "Every company's got four kinds of risk: market risk, people risk, technology risk, and financial risk. A valuation is dependent upon how much of that risk has been removed." Hmmm. I think I need to read more business books.

Update, April 2005. Allen Morgan just completed his Ten Commandments for Entrepreneurs, which have a lot of excellent thoughts and ideas for people thinking about starting a company. They're worth a read:

Music

Sugar, We're Going Down
Fall Out Boy: From Under the Cork Tree
"We're going down, down in an earlier round
And Sugar, we're going down swinging
I'll be your number one with a bullet
A loaded god complex, cock it and pull it"

Thank you Myspace for helping me discover this band. I love this album. (*****)
Hollaback Girl
Gwen Stefani: Love, Angel, Music, Baby
The first three songs are about time, money, and winning, and the album just gets better from there. What's not to love? (*****)
Gone Going
Black Eyed Peas: Monkey Business
"You see yourself in the mirror
And you feel safe coz it looks familiar
But you afraid to open up your soul
Coz you don't really know, don't really know
Who is, the person that's deep within" (*****)
Holiday
Green Day: American Idiot
"Zieg heil to the president gas man,
Bombs away is your (pun-ish-ment),
Pulvarize the Eiffel Towers, who criticize your (gov-ern-ment)..." (*****)
Dreamgirl
Dave Matthews Band: Stand Up
"I would dig a hole all the way to China, unless of course I was there, and I'd dig my way home. If by digging I could steal the wind from the sails of the greedy men who ruled the world..." (*****)
B.Y.O.B.
System of a Down: Mezmerize
"Why don't presidents fight the war?
Why do they always send the poor?" (*****)
Bleed Like Me
Garbage: Bleed Like Me
"You should see my scars..." (*****)
Beverly Hills
Weezer: Make Believe
"Where I come from isn't all that great;
My automobile is a piece of crap;
My fashion sense is a little whack,
And my friends are just as screwy as me...
Beverly Hills - That's where I want to be!
(Gimme Gimme)
Living in Beverly Hills..." (*****)
I'm Supposed To Die Tonight
50 Cent: The Massacre
"Sometimes, I sit and look at life from a different angle. Don't know if I'm God's child or I'm Satan's angel." Sing it, Fitty! (*****)
E-Pro
Beck: Guero
I love how Beck samples the Beastie Boys' "So What'cha Want" (which itself is a sample of Sly Stone's "Time for Livin'") while singing, "I won't give up that ghost. If you take away, these tongues are twisted... There's too much left to taste that's bitter..." And then Beck goes into this chorus of "Na na na na na na na" that is reminiscent of the Meow Mix jingle... (*****)
Rain Man
Eminem: Encore
"When am I gonna come to my good senses? Probably the day Bush comes to my defenses..." (*****)
Sleeping In
The Postal Service: Give Up
"The people thought they were just being rewarded for treating others as they like to be treated, for obeying stop signs and curing diseases, for mailing letters with the address of the sender... Don't wake me, I plan on sleeping in..." Thank you, Chris Wetherell... "Nothing Better" is a great track on this album, too... (*****)
Verse Chorus Verse
Nirvana: With the Lights Out
"And if you save yourself
You will make him happy
He'll keep you in a jar
And you'll think you're happy
He'll give you breathing holes
And you'll think you're happy
He'll cover you with dust
And you'll think you're happy now..." (*****)
Tilt Ya Head Back
Nelly: Sweat
"I see you lookin', uh
like what you see?
Boy, now don't be shy
and look at her face in opportunity..." (*****)
Jesus Walks
Kanye West: The College Dropout
"We at war with terrorism, racism but most of all we at war with ourselves... I want to talk to God but I'm afraid because we ain't spoke in so long..." (*****)
America, FUCK YEAH!
Team America: World Police: Soundtrack
"America, FUCK YEAH! Comin' again to save the motherfucking day, yeah! / America, FUCK YEAH! Freedom is the only way, yeah! / Terrorists, your game is through, 'cause now you have to answer to / America, FUCK YEAH!" (*****)
Canned Heat, by Jamiroquai
Napoleon Dynamite: Soundtrack

Kid on Bus: "What are you gonna do today, Napoleon?"

Napoleon Dynamite: "Whatever I feel like I wanna do. Gosh!!" (*****)
Almost
Bowling for Soup: A Hangover You Don't Deserve
"Here I go thinking about all the things I could've done. I'm gonna need a forklift, cuz all the baggage weighs a ton..." (*****)

Comments

Cool! Added them here:
http://www.socialtext.net/mayfield/index.cgi?Venture%20Capital

Posted by: Ross Mayfield | September 25, 2004 at 05:10 PM

Excellent, thanks for updating the Wiki, Ross!

Posted by: Adam | September 25, 2004 at 05:19 PM

I also found this interesting gem from Ashwin Navin on the importance of mission:

Forbes Magazine Article: "Yin Yang, Big Bang"

Rich Karlgaard writes: "Google and Wal-Mart have become huge successes in vastly different ways. But the yin and yang have this in common:

Each company has a simple mission. Wal-Mart's is "always low prices." Google's is "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." These companies know who they are

The brand and the mission statement of each are aligned. Picture Google and Wal-Mart in your head. There's no confusion about what these companies do.

Each company's offerings are dirt-simple to use. Shopping at Wal-Mart does not take a heroic intellectual effort. But neither does using Google, even though the search engine behind the curtain is the product of a prodigious intellectual feat..."

...

I've always been a fan of anchoring a company, division, group, or even my life to a mission statement. One should know if a single action takes him closer or further from that mission. Jeff Weiner taught me this when he was running Corpdev at Yahoo! Now he's running Search and I think data suggests he's doing a great job. I'm pretty sure he still spends a good chunk of time thinking about strategic direction as much as he does day-to-day tactical matters.

What's your mission?